How the Beach Boys stayed great even after America lost faith

Okay, there is no excuse for this posting, except that it’s been a rather irritating few days, and I need to indulge in some truly mindless fun. And when I need my spirits lifting, the nerdy blokes in the stripy shirts never fail me.

The Beach Boys have always been one of my favourite groups. Yes, Mike Love is a prat (especially when dancing or talking) and Brian Wilson has been a complete fruit loop for over 40 years and their various clothes and haird-dos over the decades stand as a monument to really execrable taste – but the music always acts as a tonic, and I love it. From the first time I heard“Surfin’ Safari” as a ten-year old, I’ve preferred the Boys to, say, The Beatles – still do. I suppose what I feel for them is affection as much as anything else - and, as they’ve grown fatter and balder and weirder (and deader) that sense of affection hasn’t diminished. I don’t feel sorry for them, exactly, but I admire the way they’ve battled through seemingly endless - albeit often self-created - setbacks.

Of course, back in 1966, when they released Pet Sounds and the singles, “God Only Knows”, “Good Vibrations”, “Sloop John B” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (Lord, what a quartet!) they were suddenly one of the coolest bands on the planet, well placed to become one of the Colossi of the Summer of Love. But by the time that rolled round a year later, they were on the slide, especially in the States, where their fall from grace was even more dramatic than over here. 

1967 saw the release of that glorious single, “Heroes and Villains” (my absolute favourite) – and there were other hits to follow in subsequent years (“Do It Again” and “Cottonfields”, for example) - but the two albums released in ’67 (Smiley Smile and Wild Honey) were patchy and uneven and, in parts, quite bonkers. By the end of the year, the Boys were about as cool as a forest fire, but just as effective at making people run away screaming. The reason’s not hard to identify – Brian Wilson, while trying to produce Smile, supposedly his answer to Sergeant Pepper, had descended into a massive and extended nervous breakdown, brought on by the effects of overwork and more drugs than Colombia exports in an average year on an already fragile psyche.

Despite that, of the eight albums they released between 1968 and 1977, three were stone classics, and two others weren’t too dusty. That’s a better strike rate than any band of the last twenty years, as far as I’m aware – and all done in a blizzard of drugs, a whirlpool of alcohol, a Fight Club of vicious infighting, and with their leader and main creative force totally off his nut. 

My favourite amongst these albums was 1970’s Sunflower, which managed to reach 151 in the US Charts (as Ike Turner remarked when “River Deep, Mountain High” failed to chart in the States, “maybe Benedict Arnold was right”). It’s a glorious record, including, as it does,  Brian Wilson’s beautiful hymn to his natural medium, “Add Some Music To Your Day”, and the slightly rockier “This Whole World”. With big brother Brian otherwise largely AWOL, drummer Dennis proved he was several cuts above Ringo by writing and performing “Slip On Through”, the soul-tinged “Got to Know the Woman”, and co-writing the wistful “Forever”. Even Bruce Johnston chipped in with the delighful Frenchified ballad, “Tears in the Morning”. I played the album to death at the time.

1971’s Surf’s Up featured one of Brian Wilson’s greatest productions, the achingly poignant, depressive masterpiece, “‘Til I Die”, the lovely, intriguing “Surf’s Up”, complete with superbly pretentious lyrics supplied by Van Dyke Parks (“columnated ruins domino” indeed!), Al Jardine’s nostalgia-fest, “Disney Girls” , and the extremely silly “Take a Load off Your Feet”.

The next classic was 1973’s Holland (so-called because it was recorded). Brian Wilson (and four others) produced one of the  Beach Boys’ most blissfully perfect tracks – “Sail On Sailor”, while Mike Love came up with the cheerful, sing-along summertime classic,  “California Saga/Big Sur”. Dennis Wilson co-wrote the evocative “Steamboat”, and even fat brother Carl came up with the terrific “The Trader” (with the false start left in). Best album of the year, according to “Whispering” Bob Harris, and when was he ever wrong? It managed to get to No. 20 in the UK album charts, while in America it wheezed its way up to 36. (I blame Nixon.)

1976’s 15 Big Ones was hardly vintage stuff, but it featured a great, old-fashioned Brian Wilson/Mike Love collaboration, “It’s OK”, a toe-tapping cover of the Freddie Cannon classic, “Palisades Park” and Al Jardine’s terrific rocker, “Susie Cincinnati”. 

1977 saw the release of Beach Boys Love You. It’s Brian Wilson’s favourite group album, but that might be because it saw him more involved and less deranged than he had been in years. Stand-out tracks are Al Jardine’s “Honkin’ Down the Highway” (or, as the song has it: “honkin’ down the gosh-darned highway”) and a rocking Dennis/Brian collaboration, “Mona”.

If you stuck the best tracks from 15 Big Ones and Love You together on one platter, you’d have a fourth post-Beach Boys Golden Age classic.

After that – nothing, really. I bought all of Brian Wilson’s subsequent solo albums and tried to pretend they represented a return to form. But the truth is, I never play them. 

I’m usually very dismissive of the music produced by artists past their peak, but so much of the material the chaps came up with after they became terminally unfashionable is just so strong, I can’t help doffing my cap.

The Americans partly made up for spurning their erstwhile heroes post-1966 by turning them into a national institution as a live act - but I’m still not forgiving the ungrateful bastards!